Need for Speed Most Wanted

We fought the law... and the law won.

If you own a 3D-enabled handset, Need for Speed Most Wanted is simply a must-have download for two reasons. Most importantly, it's a great racing game with an incredible amount of content and play value. However, the game also serves double-duty as a jealousy machine -- it's the kind of game that you download and then wag in front of your friend's mug while he's still trying to make the world's longest snake on his raggedy handset. (Not that there's anything wrong with Snake, per se -- but times, they are a' changing.)

Need for Speed Most Wanted doesn't come too long after EA Mobile's Need for Speed Underground 2, but in that short period of time, some of the shortcomings of Underground 2 have been ironed out. For one thing, the game just plays better. The controls feel infinitely tighter, so cornering isn't such a surgical chore. Pressing left or right on the pad is more responsive, and I found myself crashing into walls a lot less often. True, Need for Speed Most Wanted does give you some wider road to rumble on, but there were times in Need for Speed Underground 2 that not all the presentation razzle-dazzle in the world was going to dissuade my wrath.

Perhaps what astounded me most about Need for Speed Most Wanted was the realization that this wasn't just a companion piece for fans of the console game. This was as close to a "port" of a console game to the mobile scene as I've ever seen. So much content from the console game has made the transition (and fairly intact) that many doubters of wireless gaming as an approaching replacement of traditional handheld gaming could be temporarily muted.

For example, if you've played the console edition of Need for Speed Most Wanted, you're familiar with the in-game movies. They feature actors working on top of computer-generated backgrounds -- and they are so cheesy and over-the-top, they're awesome. These movies have been compressed and squeezed into Need for Speed Most Wanted. For example, the intro movie where you meet your Johnny Law nemesis Sgt. Cross is complete and very watchable. The artifacting gets a little blocky when action happens quickly, but the close-ups on faces look great and the dialogue is easily heard.

Of course, to get this movie, you have to download it into your handset. If EA Mobile put everything -- all the tracks, all the cars, all the movies, and all of the MP3-quality music into a single download -- it would take a long time to download, provided it even fit on your handset. Just like Need for Speed Underground 2, Need for Speed Most Wanted downloads content as it is either needed or requested. It lets you customize the game as you see fit, and saves you precious download minutes if you're panicky about going over.

The game follows the same basic structure of the console game. You are a new street race in Rockport City and in order to prove your worth, you have to work your way up the Blacklist, a laundry list of the baddest street racers (and actors) around. There are no fewer than 15 cats on the Blacklist, so the challenge of usurping the top-ranked burner, Razor, is immense. But Need for Speed Most Wanted is not simply a collection of fifteen races. There are ninety races in the entirety of the game, stretched across three different event types: Outrun, Speed Camera, and Boss Outrun.

Outrun races pits you against an ever-increasing phalanx of police vehicles, doggedly determined to take you down. They drive aggressively, and work together to ram you, block you, and bring your car to a halt so they can arrest you. You can hear them working together courtesy of radio chatter, where the cops relay information about your run -- thankfully, you are privy to all of their conversations. To survive these events, you just have to keep the hammer down, avoid smashing into cars, and eventually leave the fuzz in the dust.

Speed Camera races require you to zoom past four speed cameras position around the highway and roads. Each camera notes your speed, and then adds it all up at the end of the race. If the mean average is greater than the goal, you win.

Boss Outrun races are how you work your way up the Blacklist. Every time you outrun one of these punks, you take their place on the list and earn their car. Each car is successively better than the last, and there is a total of sixteen cars in the game. If you want to become better acquainted with these fools, you can download their intro movies. It takes a little time, but I highly recommend you do. Some of these goofs have to be seen to be believed. I'm not saying I'm a master thespian, but Uwe Boll would actually turn some of these actors down.

While racing, you are rewarded for drive like a madman. Like Burnout, dangerous behavior like near misses and hang time earn bonus points, which contribute to your kitty. The money earned in races will let you upgrade your ride in the game's garage.

The game itself looks fantastic -- really, this is one of the best 3D games on the market right now, eclipsing some of Gameloft's best work. The camera angles all work well for delivering a real sense of speed, something pivotal to a successful racing game. When you goose the nitrous, the screen gets a little hazy as your car lurches forward -- it takes some getting used to, but it makes sense in context. The faster you go, after all, the harder it is to see everything on the road around you. All of the cars are well-rendered with solid detail. The game's interface is clean, too, and mirrors the console game quite well.

As mentioned, the game features MP3-quality audio courtesy of EA Trax. Now, the actual quality of the songs included is open for interpretation -- most of the included artists aren't exactly my style. But the actual quality of the audio is spectacular. I tested Need for Speed Most Wanted on an LG VX8100 and the thundering Perceptionists sounded great through the stereo speakers that flank the screen.

If I have any gripe about Need for Speed Most Wanted, it's the way the menus and content access is set-up. Selecting races isn't that difficult, but finding your way into certain parts of menus isn't easy. For example, on the audio select screen, you need to push left to tell the game you want to download a track, but then get out of that select screen in order to actually start downloading the track.

The Verdict

Need for Speed Most Wanted is a magnificent achievement --
not just for EA Mobile, but also for mobile gaming. So much of the
original game made the transition smoothly. Does it look as good as an
Xbox game? No, but if you ask me, it certainly looked and played better
than the Nintendo DS edition. The soundtrack, the cinematics, the
number of races -- there is just so much here for mobile gamers to dig
right into. If you want to talk about value -- a game you will find hours
of play within -- look no further than Need for Speed Most
Wanted. The game builds on the success of Need for Speed
Underground 2, but has better control and better racing. An
absolute must-have and one of the best mobile games of the year.